


Of Heartbeats and the Unknown

by catty_the_spy



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Consent Issues, Forced Prostitution, Gen, Nonsexual Ageplay, The Capitol, off-screen noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-02-01 08:38:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12701304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: This client is different from the others. Would it be better or worse for Katniss to know?





	Of Heartbeats and the Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> So. This is a bit different from my usual wheelhouse. And yet, it's not that different at all.
> 
> Also, remember how I said I'd never do Peeta pov again?

Flavula was a regular, one of the few Peeta had. He and Katniss got few assignments in general and individual assignments even less. The worst, for Peeta, were the ones who wanted to pretend to be Katniss. Then there were the ones that wanted to be sweet talked for their birthday. There was a man that wanted nothing more than to watch him eat and another that took his time using Peeta as a platter, and then there was Flavula.

Flavula was about Effie’s age, and she lived in a three story townhouse off a busy street. Her job was “high stakes, very go-go-go”, and her husband, from whom she was separated, was “a drunken boor”. She kept her nails short and didn’t allow shoes upstairs. She bought Peeta to relax.

She never used the word bought – few clients did, but with Flavula there were no fumbling euphemisms. She talked about it like it was an invitation he could refuse, a favor for a friend. “So delighted you agreed to come over,” and so on. Her sessions lasted the longest and Peeta avoided talking about them.

Early in the morning, usually around five, Peeta would arrive at Flavula’s house. Capitol streets were never empty, but this was the closest it got, so there weren’t too many gawkers trying to catch his eye. Flavula always opened the door perfectly done up. She invited Effie in for coffee, which Effie was not allowed to accept, and then she draped an arm over Peeta’s shoulders and pulled him farther in.

“I don’t think _you_ need coffee,” she told Peeta, “but how about a nice cup of tea to get us started?”

She hired someone to do her cleaning, Peeta never saw her wash a dish, but she fixed every meal herself. When the tea was gone, it was time to take off their shoes and get upstairs.

This is where he usually stops when he tries to tell Katniss. Her eyes shutter and she looks away, and he feels so _guilty_ , because he knows what she’s thinking.

When he gets upstairs, all the way on the top floor, he showers and changes into the clothes she’s left out – soft footed pajamas and a diaper. Then he goes to the bed, his bed only as far as he knows, and pulls the covers up. In a few minutes Flavula will come and put the bars up. In the meantime, Peeta gets comfortable.

Sure enough, in comes Flavula, lifting the bars on the oversized crib. She hums a little and turns on a little music box.

“You relax, darling. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Peeta won’t ever tell Katniss.

Flavula treats the whole thing like it’s normal, like it’s no big deal. The first time it was just an afternoon “to see if we get on”. Then it was two days, “a nice little staycation”, twice a month like clockwork.

Peeta dozes until nine.

He can’t hear the street noise from this room, but the window lets in a little light. He stretches and rolls onto his back. Flavula left a stuffed duck in the crib. Peeta likes this one, because it has a heartbeat. A squeeze turns it on and he tries to relax. It’s easier to piss when he calms down.

The first one of the day is always the hardest. The tea helps.

The first full day, it had taken him hours. He knew he had to – he’d been told that first afternoon “only big boys use the potty”. He’d held it, and she hadn’t forced the issue. But it’s easy to hold it for an afternoon, harder for a day full of tea, milk, water, and juice.

Now he uses it to get into the right mindset. If he starts the morning wet, he gets all the awkwardness out of the way.

At nine fifteen Flavula opens the door. “Good morning, sweet one.” And the day begins.

Flavula is strong, but she doesn’t carry Peeta everywhere. She lifts him onto the changing table but he has to walk over there.

“Not very hydrated, poor dear. We’ll have to take care of that.”

Peeta fidgets. Flavula is already starting to relax.

“Let’s make this a pajama day, sweet boy. Hmm? You like a pajama day?”

Peeta doesn’t have to have to talk, and often he didn’t. He runs the duck’s beak over his lips.

“We’ll have a nice quiet day,” Flavula declares. She zips up his sleeper. “But first, come on.”

He holds her hand on the stairs.

Breakfast was always oatmeal with molasses, almost like home. He had to wear a bib, but that had never been a struggle. Drinking milk from a bottle had been harder, but now it was a little soothing. There was a hint of medicinal undertone to it.

He liked the way she rubbed his back after. He could go back to sleep like this. He had once.

“Come on darling. Shh, don’t fuss.”

She clips a pacifier to him and pops it in his mouth. He sighs. The duck’s heart was still beating in his hands. He squeezes it hard to turn it off.

“Let’s go. Hold Mommy’s hand so you don’t fall.”

Bedrooms were for sleeping, so most of the toys were in the playroom. Peeta lies down on his stomach, still more interested in snoozing than playing. He runs his fingers around the hard plastic of the pacifier. He always gnawed it a bit. Flavula never scolded him for it.

After a while he wakes up more. He likes the soft toys best, and Flavula put them on the blanket within reach. He leaves the duck for a fuzzy caterpillar that played music and a bear whose stomach lit up. If he rolls over there are more hanging from a wide arch. All the harder toys were neatly put away, waiting for him to pull them out. Soft toys; he’d had a ragged scrap doll that used to be his brothers’. They’d been rough on it, and Mother hadn’t been inclined to help him mend it.

Flavula has a few things to reorganize or put away, and she does so cheerfully, keeping up a soft running commentary that Peeta feels safe to ignore. Peeta lies on his stomach and imagines he's small, too small to get up and fetch toys from the shelves, perhaps too small to sit up at all…

The phone rings.

“Goodness,” Flavula says. She doesn’t go answer it.

Peeta stretches and pushes up on his haunches.

A short while later it was time for lunch. He had his third bottle of the day after. He didn’t rush through it. For one he wasn’t especially thirsty, as Flavula kept him well watered. For another, it was nice. He likes being held and Flavula likes holding him.

They go back upstairs and the phone rings again. This time Flavula doesn’t ignore it. She left him in the playroom with a baby monitor, and Peeta amuses himself with the blocks while he keeps an ear out. The office, where the phone was, was soundproofed, but she didn’t always close the door.

“-don’t care what he has to say! The law clearly states-”

His stomach burbles. Peeta turns on the heartbeat duck.

This had always been the hardest part.

The first full session, he’d held this as well. It hadn’t been easy. He was sweating when he left, but he couldn’t handle the idea.

Before he’d left, while they waited for Effie to arrive, Flavula gave him a last cup of tea.

“Do you need me to help you?” she’d asked.

“I think-” But what was there to say?

She waited, not anxious or irritable. Her frank demeanor threw him off. For a moment he hated her for taking the time to ask.

“Yes,” he’d said after an awkwardly long pause. “Yes, please.”

The next visit she’d put something in the milk.

Going that first time had startled him badly. It had just…happened, coming out of him as quickly as he’d felt the urge. There’d been no stopping it, and he’d certainly tried.

He’d cried.

He’d clung to Flavula and felt conflicted, but at the same time he’d needed her, needed anyone, to console him. She’d calmed him down and changed him and said “There we go, all better.” And it wasn’t all better, and yet…it sort of was.

By the time the drug kicked in there was no holding his piss either, but it didn’t matter as much. Today, it was only uncomfortable.

He hugs his duck and whines. Flavula came if the monitor picked up any unhappy noise. Of course, that depended on him being loud enough. Crying properly took effort.

“You don’t want it to go higher than me, Cassius. Take care of it!”

Flavula’s frown had creased her makeup, but she smiled a little when she came back. “Sorry darling, momma’s all done.”

She coos at him and hugs him. When he doesn’t settle she says “Ahh, I see. It’s okay baby, Momma will fix it.”

She changed him on the floor of the playroom.

“All better,” she said, and it was.

There were no more phone calls. Flavula played with him. He played alone. Bottles, naps, diaper changes. Peeta didn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. Flavula took care of everything.

At dinner he eats more soft food and a very crumbly cookie. He crawls up the stairs and Flavula praises the accomplishment. She brushes his teeth for him. She bathes him. He starts to fall asleep halfway through his bottle and lets himself be lulled by her heartbeat. She was warm and soft and she sang to him. He barely remembers being put to bed.

He’s in the arena. “Finish the job, loverboy.”

He digs a claw into Katniss’s warm neck and her blood bubbles over his hands. There’s a growl. They’re on the cornucopia.

“Peeta!”

The arrow hits him in a chest and he falls. He falls into teeth. He rolls but they grab him by his belt –

He rolls over, crying and gagging, and warm hands lift him up and he’s half in half out of Flavula’s lap. He cries, he cries, he cries.

“It was just a dream,” Flavula croons. “It’s alright. It’s over now.”

He squeezes her too tightly. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.

She kisses the top of his head. She doesn’t go.

He calms in fits and starts. Eventually he accepts the pacifier and runs his fingers around the plastic base.

“There we go. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

She changes him and puts him in fresh pajamas.

She holds him. He always needs…something…after a nightmare.

He dozes off.

He rouses just a little, whines at the click of a latch, but there’s something soft under his hand. He pulls it closer, presses his face against the heartbeat, and sighs into the warm circles rubbed on his back.

Peeta doesn’t dream again.

Flavula lets him sleep in. Instead of breakfast he drinks a nutritional supplement from his bottle and drowses against Flavula’s chest. The bib is useful.

“Poor thing,” Flavula says. “You had a rough night.”

She doesn’t comment on his being fussy and clingy. She sits with Peeta on the blanket and helps him play with the soft toys. Then she reads to him.

“ _‘We’re sorry’, the naughty districts cried. ‘Please let us come home!’ And kindly Father Panem took them back, every one._ ”

He’ll have to leave at seven and go back to the tribute tower, but for now he curls into her hands and lets himself relax.

Come six it’s time to change clothes.

Flavula knocks on the door to the nursery. She doesn’t normally interrupt him.

“You took your medication late today,” she says. “It won’t have worn off by midnight.”

“Okay,” Peeta says. He’s lost on a puddle of his own clothes. He sits on the toilet with very little direction.

He’s dribbled on his briefs. He’s out of sorts.

“Would you like to take something with you?” Flavula asks.

“I…I don’t know.”

“Do you need me to help?”

Peeta nods. He relaxes a little. It’s easier when it’s out of his control.

Flavula brings him a little nondescript bag, nothing like the large brightly decorated catch-alls she keeps around the house.

“These are for tonight. I believe you’ll be able to manage these yourself. I have some pull-ups for the ride home. Are you alright with that?”

He nods.

“Use your words, please, Peeta.”

“That’s…good. That’s good. That will help.”

She leaves him to it.

Slowly but surely he works his way back to normal. He doesn’t suck his fingers on the way down the stairs.

On the ground floor he joins Flavula for tea.

“I’m sorry about the phone calls, Peeta. I’ll make sure we aren’t interrupted again.”

“That’s fine.”

“You know, I’ve thought about doing a longer session; maybe ten days. How does that sound?”

Ten days.

“You don’t have to decide right away.”

“I’ll think about it,” Peeta says.

“Thank you.”

 

Peeta keeps to himself until late evening, and as usual no one tries to draw him out. It’s their routine, especially after joint assignments when just looking at each other is torture.

Peeta floats between his room and the bathroom, and he tries not to think. About the next assignment, the drug lingering in his system, Flavula’s ten days. Thinking about the next assignment – Septimus, who’ll jerk off beside the table while Peeta eats himself sick – won’t help him get his head together.

Eventually, Katniss knocks on the door, and he lets her in.

“How was it?” she asks.

“It was fine,” Peeta says. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“What’s ordinary?” she says. It’s a rhetorical question.

“Can I sleep in here?” she asks. “I would have asked earlier but you never came to dinner.”

“Sure; of course.”

He tells himself she won’t notice; and if she does, she won’t ask. Not tonight. By the time she works up the nerve – lets the question burst out of her, a hot burst of steam that built and built until it had to force it’s way free – he’ll have a good enough lie.

“I don’t know which one is worse,” she says, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Not knowing what happens to you or being there to see it.”

“You didn’t have one today,” he says.

“No. I just…worry. I was worried.”

She wears a fanatically modest nightgown. At home, in Twelve, she doesn’t bother. Sometimes she’ll crawl in through his window, wearing a camisole and panties under her jacket. In the Capitol she’s covered from her chin to her ankles. It’s nothing like the thin strips of fabric their buyers want her to wear.

“Are you ready for the party?”

“Ugh,” Peeta says, and for the first time this evening Katniss cracks a smile.

The party is the unveiling of last year’s arena as a cleaned up tourist attraction. Not their arena, not that that made it better. Some of the guests would be old assignments. Some would be fellow Victors, who were never good company. And Snow. President Snow would be there.

He shivers.

“It’s warmer over here,” Katniss whispers.

She doesn’t want to spook him. She thinks…and what else could she think, when he hasn’t told her the least bit of it, hasn’t reassured her that it’s nothing like that. There are no memories to wash off. Not tonight. It’s not fair to keep this to himself, when she’s so worried.

“Are you sure?” he says. “I didn’t think you could handle me without my makeup.”

It startles a snort out of her.

“I’m serious. In my raw state I can be too much to take.”

“Is that a bread joke?”

“Why? Is it getting a rise out of you?”

Katniss burrows in closer.

He hisses and jerks his hips away. “Your feet are freezing!”

He can’t see it, with her head on his chest, but he can feel it when she smiles. “Don’t be a baby, Peeta.”


End file.
